links for 2008-10-09 October 10, 2008

Spam is one of the major pitfalls of the social web. According to sites such as Postini, 10 out of 12 email messages are spam. As if that weren't already enough to make you cringe, 1 in 39 emails contain a virus. Spam is penetrating into other regions of the Internet as well. The creators of the blogging software WordPress report that nearly 87% of all blog comments are also spam. As messaging and communication applications proliferate throughout the web, developers and site owners have to get creative in the fight against the thousands upon thousands of unwanted messages streaming in every day. Deciding on the best method of spam prevention on your blogs, forums, or even contact forms can be difficult. In this article we will take a look at a service called Akismet and how it can help. We will also look at why some other methods of fighting spam fail.